Daedalus articles from September 2003

Daedalus archives from September 2003

A sense of the mysterious.
September 22, 2003... Ever since I was a young boy, my passions have been divided between science and art. I was fortunate to make a life in both, as a physicist and a novelist, and even to find creative sympathies between the two, but I have had to live with a...

Physics & reality.(includes multiple articles)
September 22, 2003... Editor's Note: There is probably no modern scientist as famous as Albert Einstein. Born in Germany in 1879 and educated in physics and mathematics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, he was at first unable to find a teaching...

Einstein's Third Paradise.(Albert Einstein)
September 22, 2003... Historians of modern science have good reason to be grateful to Paul Arthur Schilpp, professor of philosophy and Methodist clergyman but better known as the editor of a series of volumes on "Living Philosophers," which included several volumes...

The bell & the buzzer: on the meaning of science.
September 22, 2003... To seek the meaning of science is to seek its human significance. At first glance, that seems problematic because modern science characteristically calls into question many of our all-too-human preconceptions in its effort to discover the...

The logic of non-Western science: mathematical discoveries in medieval India.
September 22, 2003... One of the most significant things one learns from the study of the exact sciences as practiced in a number of ancient and medieval societies is that, while science has always traveled from one culture to another, each culture before the modern...

Trials & tribulations: science in the courts.
September 22, 2003... "I should like to know" [asked Mr. Chichely] "how a coroner is to judge of evidence if he has not had a legal training?" "In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require...

Science & the promise of democracy in America.
September 22, 2003... The intellectual skirmishes known as the science wars have centered on whether scientific facts and theories are socially constructed. This is, of course, a substantive argument over meaningful issues: the nature of truth, the possibility of...

The Tune on Your Mind.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Asperges me hyssopo the snatch of plainsong went, Thou sprinklest me with hyssop was the clerical intent, not Asparagus with hiccups and never autistic savant. Asperger, mais. Asperg is me. The coin took years to drop: ...

Photographing Aspiration.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Fume-glossed, unhearably shrill, this car is dilated with a glaze that will vanish before standstill-- and here's the youth swimming in space above his whiplash motorcycle: quadriplegia shows him its propped face-- after, he...

That place.(Short Story)
September 22, 2003... At first the doctor assured Nora that her mother's complaints--nausea, mouth ulcers, headaches, dizziness--were the inevitable response to the regimen of chemo. But then Bev developed a low-grade fever, indicating the presence of an infection...

On science under legal assault.
September 22, 2003... For more than three decades, I have conducted research on memory. My research shows that memory is malleable--and that it is a flimsy curtain indeed that separates memory from imagination. I've seen how false memories can destroy lives,...

On humanism past & present.
September 22, 2003... Is there, or can there be, any place for humanism in the world of the twentyfirst century? After the appalling events of the past century, is there any ground left to believe that mankind may yet come to regard the life and happiness of human...